


to keep the truth of loneliness

by staarked



Category: An Ember in the Ashes - Sabaa Tahir
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Future Fic, Laia who?, One Shot, Romance, post book 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 10:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5662402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staarked/pseuds/staarked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the war wins, all it leaves behind is the dead and the ruined. — Elias/Helene. Future fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to keep the truth of loneliness

**Author's Note:**

> Well, one of my lovely anons back at tumblr requested it and so here I am. I frankly didn't understand why did Laia and Elias kicked off a romance, it looked forced and was painful to read and I don't even have my rose-tinted shipper goggles on.

 

 _"I get ahead of myself._  
_I keep ruining everything I touch by turning it into gold."_

 

 

—

 

 

  
The sadness in her eyes is a language too dead to pronounce. He doesn’t even chance an attempt to decipher it until the distance between them collapses to give way to the press of a letter in his hand.

“You’re no longer _his_ Blood Shrike,” He announces, slowly, taking in the feminine cuts of her gown, missing weapons on her person, lack of war in her eyes.

“Why yes,” she agrees pleasantly, stifling down inflections of emotion till her words edge sharper than any steel he’s ever faced. “I’m not.”

The tension evaporates from the line of her shoulders as her hand slackens in his grip, ready to be withdrawn.

_“Why?”_

He refuses to let go, wounding his fingers so tight around hers that he nearly slices his palm open on the rim of hard stone. Despite being scorched with half dread and half realization, he lifts her hand to his sight and sees the answer staring back up at him. “You’re to be his wife.”

 

 

—

 

 

They end the same way they started out, lost and listless.

 

 

—

 

 

The pardon is cast in golden tendrils of alphabets out of a sophistication Marcus can’t afford and he can’t shrink away from.

“I don’t deserve this,” He tells her, not entirely sure if he’s loosening references to her devotion or her self-inflicted martyrdom. “I don’t want it.”

Her lips twist in a cruel parody of what would have been a smile if not for the bitterness shaping it. “You wanted it the minute you left.” She reminds him gently, the lightness of the consonants blunting the severity of the truth. “I hope your freedom against mine was worth it.”

“Helene-” He can’t keep her and he can’t let her go. He has always been a selfish bastard. No puns to be found.

She turns away. “Goodbye, Elias.”

“What does he want from me?” He sounds mad. He _is_ mad.

“Oh,” she throws a carefully disinterested glance over her shoulder and it occurs to him that maybe she’d just wanted to _hear_ him ask her to stay, “he wants you to give me away at the wedding.”

 

 

—

 

 

The days die out with his resentment spilling colour in place of relief and if he allows himself to think about it long enough, he can’t remember the last time he saved someone who needed saving.

 

 

—

 

 

She’s beautiful in white, more a goddess than a warrior even in the face of the starkness of the fabric and the ruffles of her dress. He hates it the moment he sees it. “You look odd.”

She meets his stare in the reflection of the mirror, something like worldly awareness finding its way into her eyes. “ _I look beautiful_.”

He holds her eyes, inching closer until the space between them is nothing yet still something that separates. Reaching out, his fingers find purchase on the bare skin of her arm and he tugs her around insistently until she’s pinned against the cold glass, discomfort set along her spine. “Run away with me.”

She braces herself, leaning back to offer some semblance of an opening. He can almost hear her heart thud out of beat from where he stands but her voice doesn’t waver around the acrid laugh she chokes out. She doesn’t want him here anymore than he wants to be here.

“ _No_ ,” she says, “fuck you, Elias. No.”

His free hand shatters into the mirror behind her and she flinches within the catch of his arms. Splinters dig into his clenched fist and colour spills from the shard embeddings and falls into crimson splotches on her dress. He’d wanted to stain her dress the moment he saw it.

He can feel the tremble of her fingers as she plies his hand away.  
  
“You’re bleeding.” She observes unhelpfully, and honestly, he’s sorry before he’s said it.

“Then sing for me.” The request is disconcerting; he can map out the weight of it in the bend of her back, the widening of her eyes, the sleigh of her hand. “One last time.”

She pulls away started. 

He doesn’t let her.

“One last time,” She repeats blankly like she doesn’t mean it.

But then she does. The tune wraps itself around him, stitching his skin together in an agonizingly slow movement and for a moment he’s proud because the damage to her dress is irreparable, nothing that a few musical notes can mend. He stills, framed in a loss of sanity before he drags her closer and for a second the melody is nothing but a dissolve of white noise.

She looks up at him wearily and her voice snags, failing for three fractions of a lifetime wasted.

“ _One last time.”_ He persists.

She opens her mouth again to sing, he steals the song off her lips.

 

 

—

 

 

In the end, she walks away a woman grown and rises back a queen.

She is more magnificent than the altar itself even though there is nothing remotely holy about the ceremony.

He _almost_ laughs.

 

 

—

 

  
It’s cold outside, rain splatters across the window pane of her room and he feels caged in a joke where the punch line grew obsolete a decade ago. “Tell me it isn’t true.”

He finds himself looking away from her only to be looking back, eyes lingering on the dotting marks on her neck. His glare is so accusatory that it forces her own to drop down to the folded hands on her lap. “I’m sorry,” the stiffness settles resolutely in her face, “I can’t.”

He steps toward her then, _not entirely kind_ , only to see her hand twitch unconsciously to the slight swell of her belly. He stops, grimacing.

“Elias-”

“Did you ever even love me?” He interrupts abruptly, because it has never been important before but for some reason it is now, his selfishness never made for a good bedtime story.

“More than life itself,” she admits in the same easy manner she used, to confess to the most scandalous of things, without slightest reluctance. “I broke my heart over you in the beginning.”

“ _Beginning?_ ” The words burn but only because she didn’t mean them to. “Then isn’t it just sad that here, in the end, I find myself in your shoes?”

Her silence is louder than the song at the back of his head. It derails itself along the tune and the pauses in the notes are the places where she dwells.

“It’s not too late,” he’s surprised at his own desperation, he wants it to be true _so badly_ , “I can still save you.”

She recoils as if struck, pulling away from the reach of his gravity. “Elias, you can’t save someone who doesn’t need saving."

It’s cold outside.

It’s _colder_ inside.

 

 

—

 

 

When the war wins, all it leaves behind is the dead and the ruined. 

He kisses her.

_She doesn’t._

It would be tragic if it wasn’t already damning.

**Author's Note:**

> Come at me, bro. No seriously, I'm a cheap whore for cookies and reviews. Not necessarily in that order.


End file.
